


Begin Again

by cecilantro



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-09-24 17:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17105159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Caleb's guilt has been eating him alive, he's begun to hallucinate Mollymauk Tealeaf just to keep himself together, fighting, he knows Molly never would have let him get this bad.The moonlight lends itself to the solidity of the imagination, he thinks, as he sees a very solid lavender tiefling below him.





	1. Stay Awake

**Author's Note:**

> All chapters named after songs!
> 
> 1 - Stay Awake (London Grammar)
> 
> 2 - Are You Home? (Amber Run)
> 
> 3 - You Are The Moon (The Hush Sound)
> 
> 4 - Tempt You (Nothing But Thieves)
> 
> 5 - Light (Sleeping At Last)
> 
> Each chapter's gonna be significantly shorter than my longfics, forewarning, it's meant as like. A ficlet series.

Caleb runs a hand through his hair, eyes wide and on the floor of his lonely inn room. He wants Nott, he wants her comfort, her company, but he is the one that told her to leave him tonight.  
He had almost run, again, but he can’t- can’t leave, can’t leave them, he loves, his family, his friends.  
Fjord, the last barrier torn between the beginning and end of the world, he’s trying to please everyone and Caleb loves and can’t- he knows he is trouble.

One day, one day, his past will catch up and bring the Nein down with him and he’s made-

He’s made-

Oh, so many mistakes.

He closes his eyes and sees Mollymauk’s shocked face on the backs of his eyelids and that’s why he’s here, Jester had dropped the disguise the second she’d seen Caleb’s reaction and he’d almost- so close-  
Nearly cried, right there, because Molly died- Molly died because Caleb wasn’t good, wasn’t strong enough, he cannot, will _not,_ never happen again, he won’t let it.

His friends.

His family.

He thinks about lying down in the earth, too, joining Molly in that infinite other world but he won’t

He remembers the U-shaped scar on the deck of the Squalleater, where he’d pulled the flames to his fingertips again just to keep them all safe, to keep them alive, almost- almost- he had very nearly, himself, Fjord’s arm around his waist, he knows, the sensation still lingers. He had protected them, his family, and they had protected him back. Nearly. Almost.  
But Molly-  
Molly is gone and Caleb wasn’t stupid. Isn’t. Is, he’s an _idiot, a fool, imbecile,_ but he hadn’t missed Molly’s interests, hadn’t missed-

He knew.

When Molly was alive.

He had seen the beginnings of the fire of feelings burning in the tiefling’s red eyes and he could have done the same, he knows, if he wasn’t broken inside like glass. Shattered, sharp, dangerous.

He feels phantom warmth settle over one of his hands as he balls it into the bedspread. His hair is greasy, stringy, if Molly was alive, he never would have-  
He never would have let Caleb get this bad again.  
If Caleb had saved him. If he had done _anything_ but watch him die, defiant until that last breath, filled with blood and anger and _fuck you_ rolls in his head.  
The Molly that sits ghostly beside him leans in. He does not tell Caleb that it is not his fault, because nowhere in Caleb’s subconscious can he believe for a second that it isn’t, and this Mollymauk is a product of his own imagination. He’s drunk, sad, breaking apart and bursting at the seams, he threatens to spill his shards everywhere.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, before he can stop himself, and the Molly made from his own mind smiles, the tears in his eyes mirror those welling in Caleb’s. There is more phantom warmth as the Molly presses one incorporeal hand to Caleb’s cheek and Caleb sobs to lean into it, lean into the idea that he could have been more, one day, if he ever put himself back together. He doesn’t deserve it, would never deserve it, but Caleb is a selfish man. He would take that love anyway, twist it, turn it, something horrible from the goodness of Molly’s golden heart and in that regard, perhaps it’s better that Molly is gone.

He cannot corrupt a dead man.

Caleb pulls away from that Mollymauk, from the idea, he takes his hip flask as he kicks his boots off. He had dropped gold on this, he needs it, can’t, won’t, does not want to-  
He doesn’t.  
Does not think.

He tips the flask up and chugs, feels the burn go down into his airway and drinks choking on the whiskey, unsure which burns more- that, or the tears on his cheeks or the brand-like feeling on his forehead where Molly had kissed him once.

He stumbles to the window hacking up a lung when he’s drained the whole thing, most of it gone the right way, most of it. He’s sick, knew he would be, coughs into the street below until the world hazes so hard that he reels back to bed, Mollymauk’s phantom warmth at his waist, guiding him, tucking him in, kissing his forehead.

“ _I could have loved you,_ ” Caleb rasps in Zemnian, “ _I think. One day._ ”

 _‘Go to sleep,_ his Mollymauk whispers back, and as Caleb’s mind gives out under the pressure, the phantom Molly does too.

 

 

 

Caleb is not proud of the amount of times this happens as they make their way back, deeper into the empire, toward Xhorhas this time. They can- will- must  
Must fix this. Everything.  
Molly’s grave marker is broken off, a ring of brambles and forget-me-nots and Caleb wishes he could cry. It would feel better if he could cry.

“I miss him too,” Nott says gently as the cart passes the patch on the way up to Shady Creek, Caleb leaning over the side of the cart, Yasha at his other side.

“I don’t miss him, Nott.” Caleb corrects, he wants to tell her that it’s more, that he feels emptier without the tiefling here but he can’t because- because that’s wrong,  
Weird,  
He’s empty. He’s full of shards of broken glass. He’s empty, anyway, Molly or none, but emptier without, more hollow-hearted but he is full of protective determination, selfish desire, he will get his hands on the great grandfather clock that controls time and turn it back. Back. Bring Molly back.

Wait.

Wait, no, no, stop Ikithon, stop himself, kill his past before it can do those things, those-  
Molly, he had killed Molly, too, shining so bright-  
Molly, like his own little flame, Caleb had let him be snuffed out,

“Mollymauk,” he says, aloud, he hasn’t heard any of the words that Nott has been saying, hasn’t, oh- oh,

There is a ghost of warmth on his shoulder.

 _‘Deep breaths,’_ he is forgetting what Molly’s voice sounded like, his infallible memory failing him for the first time. He can’t remember.  
 _‘Deep breaths,’_ the mental image repeats and Caleb obeys wordlessly, mindlessly.

 

He’s becoming something of an insomniac, he trails the streets they stay in at night because he’s losing what’s left of his broken mind being cooped up in an inn when he doesn’t sleep for hours on end, trying to remember what Molly’s voice was, the glint in his eyes, the way his hair fell.  
He is seeing Mollymauk everywhere, every peacock, in the sun and the moons, in the grass when it is green, in the blue of the sky, in every joy of life that Molly never got to take pleasure in. In every breath, and the longer it goes, the longer they stay in Shady Creek- around two weeks, Nott gets sick- the worse it gets. It was here, coming here, they were so foolish. He was so foolish.

How could he?

Mollymauk had been so young. He had so much life ahead of him, he could have done so much good, Caleb has things to do but he’d still trade his life for Molly’s in a heartbeat because the guilt born of his sins is eating him alive. If he could trade his whole existence for just one more shot at Molly’s life, he would, it would fix everything.

He prays, sometimes. To anyone that will listen. To the Moonweaver, begging her forgiveness, to the Archeart, begging some kind of answer or guidance, to The Traveler, and those don’t even have words anymore.

 

 

The first night that he doesn’t come back, he collapses on the street face-down and if he had anything worth stealing, it would have been gone. His necklace just looks like worthless stone.  
Caduceus finds him, in the grey light of dawn, when a very ill Nott had woken and panicked and begged until she was sick and Caduceus had soothed her to sleep before he took to the streets.  
Caleb comes to bleary, rocked in warm arms and the smell of floral incense and for a moment he tricks himself,

“Mollymauk?” he whispers, and then he sees the pink and the blue and the wide purple eyes blinking down at him,

“I’m sorry,” is all the answer that Clay can give and Caleb doesn’t even try to fight the tears or the rush of blessed unconsciousness.

 

 

He has learned to climb in the time since Molly had died, he sits in trees when he can’t sleep, now, off the ground and tied down in case he falls, watching the night sky turn above him and catching sight of the cloaked, hooded individuals that pass the main road beneath him. People-watching seems like respite. He can pretend he isn’t in his outline, for a while, and then he’s just fine again. But he isn’t.

He’s still a bursting bag of broken glass when the glint of red catches his eye, when ringed fingers lower a hood, expertly avoiding the catch of curled ram’s-horns, the moonlight illuminates the peacock side of a purple face and Caleb-

Caleb hasn’t slept in three days. He thinks he’s hallucinating.

“Caleb?”

He had forgotten just how wonderful Mollymauk’s voice was. Is.

 _Is,_ Mollymauk stands on the gravel below him now in very different clothes, in a thick, black woolen sweater with a high neck and no sleeves, a dark cloak, loose pants, _flat shoes,_ unlike Molly at all, really.  
  
Caleb knows, then, he is not hallucinating. He could never have imagined Molly in something this drab.

His dagger cuts him loose before he can think about it, he tumbles to the floor in complete silence, for Molly has stolen his tongue.  
And then Caleb is running into him, full force, he has never hugged anyone like this before and he’s not sure how to do it but Molly’s arms are around his waist, too, he can hear laughter in his ear and is he laughing too? He’s not sure-  
Tired.  
He’s so tired.  
He just wants to sleep.

He passes out in Mollymauk Tealeaf’s _very solid, living_ arms, his pulse is pressed to Caleb’s back and though he is somewhat weaker for his time under the earth, he still manages to hold the wizard mostly upright. It’s not the first time he’s held an unconscious Caleb.

Now, it won’t be the last. 


	2. Are You Home?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for Body Horror (Plants growing from physical form)

Molly takes Caleb back to his own inn room, struggling and stumbling under his weight and he’s not sure- not really- if Caleb is alone, if Molly has friends, family here. If Yasha is here. Could she be? Might he not be alone anymore?

 

He’d clawed his way out of the ground with flowers growing in places they shouldn’t, mushrooms sprouting slowly down his arm and they’d only grown as time went on. He’d felt himself falling to shreds as he clawed his way toward- anywhere. Toward the forest.  
Toward the firbolgs from before, picked up instead by a brown-furred firbolg walking the same path as him, watching him crawl,

“ _Molly,_ ” she had called him, kindness and shock in her eyes, “ _Mister Clay got to you, then._ ”

Her touch is soft and that name sounds familiar, like it could be his own but his throat is half-full of rose petals and he can taste them even in the present as he struggles Caleb up the stairs.  
He remembers the firbolg’s ears as she’d scooped him from the floor, floppy, soft, a smaller firbolg at her side watching her carefully,

“ _Are they okay?_ ” a small voice, a child, he remembers how he’d known he loved to make them smile.

“ _They will be,_ ” Nila had assured, and carried Molly away again, into the forest to spend months in recovery as she guards him, treats him, he is an honorary member of the little family within weeks. He plays with the children, he teaches them tricks, he coughs up rose petals until Nila finally manages to get her hands on the material components for a Greater Restoration and strip them from his skin to leave him whole again.

 

Molly almost drops Caleb onto his bed, when he finally makes it through the door. But it seems like Caleb needs this rest, so he strains instead to put him down gently and locks the door before coming back and gently stripping Caleb’s coat from his shoulders, unbuckling his book harnesses, taking his boots off and setting them at the edge of the bed.

Molly- he’s been-

So alone.

He has had nobody, for months, it still hurts to talk sometimes with the scars from the thorns marring the back of his throat.

He’s been so alone, pining for his friends, family, for Caleb. He had made no secret of his attraction to- well, to any of them, but none quite like Caleb. He would, in a heartbeat, have slept with Fjord, or Jester, perhaps even fallen for Fjord in more time but not- not like Caleb.  
Curse Molly’s soft heart, but Caleb had needed help, and Molly needed someone to work on like a long-term project. Falling for him wasn’t meant to be part of the deal, but by the time he’d died he was halfway through figuring out that, yes, his attraction to Caleb went beyond _pretty wizard_. He’d wanted some kind of calm life at his side.

He _wants_ some kind of calm life at his side.

It takes a great deal of self restraint not to lie too close, not to wind around Caleb just to feel someone else’s heartbeat. Molly instead settles on the other side of the bed, quiet, tired, curls under a thin blanket as he’s doubled the quilt over Caleb and he blinks himself, slowly, to sleep. He can see Caleb. He can hear his breathing. He can feel the gentle tremble of the bed.

It’s so much more than he ever dreamt he’d have again.

 

Molly wakes before Caleb the next morning with the taste of grave dirt and rose petals on his tongue, but it doesn’t scare him the way it once did. His mind does not betray him in the slats of sunlight illuminating the bed, illuminating Caleb, he really doesn’t want to-

Shouldn’t, really, wake him.

He’d collapsed like he hadn’t slept and Molly knows that feeling all too well, but-

But-

If Caleb is here, perhaps the rest of the Nein is, too. Yasha. Fjord. Jester. Nott. Gods, he even misses Beau- he misses them all, so much, so much, like his own heart has abandoned his chest and he crawls toward Caleb and shakes his shoulder, gently,

“Caleb?” His voice is a soft rasp, but it’s wonderful just to feel the wizard’s name on that twice-dead tongue once more, “Hey. Caleb. Wake up.”

Caleb stirs, slowly, turning onto his side and pressing into Molly’s touch,

“ _Ja,_ ” he murmurs, softly, “I know. Just let this be a little longer, please, Mollymauk.”

Molly worries his lip as he considers it, Caleb has wriggled to fit his cheek to the curve of Molly’s palm, sleepy and smiling and- well.  
He has been gone- a long time.

Five more minutes won’t hurt.

“...here.” Molly catches the end of the murmur and ducks a little closer, his hair longer, grown out and making itself a curtain from the sun,

“What was that?”

“Hm. Come down here.”

Molly- it occurs to him, only then, that this is not Caleb of sound mind. Not the Caleb he’d known. Not the Caleb he’d ever thought could be.

“No, come on, time to get up now.”

There’s a soft whine, and Caleb paws closer to Molly’s hand as he tries to pull it away.

“ _Nein,_ Mollymauk, I don’t- I don’t want you to go again. Please just let me dream.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Crikey, Gods above, Moonweaver help him- that hurts Molly’s heart in the worst and most wonderful ways, he runs a hand gently through Caleb’s greasy hair, a besotted smile that he can’t fight gracing his features,

“Caleb, I’m here. I’m alive. Come on, get up, Nott’ll be worried.”

Caleb’s eyes, for the first time, crack open, and Molly actually _tears up_ at the glimmer of bright blue as a sleep-sodden Caleb Widogast observes him, silent for a moment before he sits up, pulls back,

“Jester?” He asks, tentatively, and Molly shakes his head with a wide grin,

“Nope.”

Another pause, Caleb’s eyes widen slowly, mixed joy and disbelief whirling like a maelstrom in the sky behind them,

“M- Mollymauk? Is it- is it really you?”

Molly offers his hands out, and Caleb takes them both, pressing his fingertips to Molly’s pulse points on his wrist, feeling his heartbeat,

“Really me.” he promises gently, “And not that you haven’t been incredible company, darling, but- are you still travelling with our friends? It’s been a while. I miss them.”

“Mollymauk.” Caleb says almost absently, and Molly finds himself being pulled into a much neater, but still somewhat awkward hug. Caleb is all bone and warmth and desperate against Molly, fists balling in the woolen shirt at Molly’s back. Molly loops his own arms around Caleb’s waist and squeezes, taking deep, steadying breaths. Caleb is filthy, again, much like when they’d first met but underneath he still smells of moss and books and leather and _Caleb_ , he smells of home. Molly’s heart sings.

Caleb shakes against him, and Molly realises, startled, that he is sobbing,

“Mollymauk,” Caleb whispers into Molly’s shoulder, “ _Mollymauk,_ we thought- we thought you were gone, this time, truly. Finally. I should- I should have been stronger, Mollymauk, I am so sorry. I should have- have saved you, helped you, I- I-”

“ _Oh,_ Caleb. Hush. Shut the fuck up.” Molly soothes, lifting a hand to slip his fingers into Caleb’s hair, holding the back of his head as he cries, “There was nothing you could have done. I don’t blame you, or Nott, or Keg, or Beau. It was Lorenzo’s fault, and I hear he’s dead now. It’s okay,” Molly soothes, rocking the two of them and Caleb draws away just far enough to see Molly’s face, if not meet his eyes,

“I did it. We killed him. I killed him. He killed- he killed Frumpkin. Bastard.”

“I’m so glad to see you again.” Molly says, finally, because he can’t keep it in a second longer, he even braves himself cupping Caleb’s jaw gently, “I missed you.”

“I’m sorry-”

“No, don’t be sorry,” Molly pulls, gently, kisses Caleb’s forehead, “There’s nothing you can do to fix the past, Caleb. You can only fix the future.”

“There are ways-” Caleb starts, and snaps his mouth shut again, much to Molly’s amusement,

“You shouldn’t change the past, Caleb,” he corrects, “You should change the future. With me.”

Caleb’s eyes close involuntarily, he presses into Molly’s warm palm like it could be a lifeline, tears gathering and beading under his eyelashes.

“And the others? Are they here? In town?”

“Ah-” Caleb’s eyes pop open, “ _Sheiße,_ yes, they are- they will be worried for me.”

“It’s alright, alright, come on. Let’s go see them.”

“Now? Are you feeling up to it?”

Molly pretends to think about it for a few long moments,

“Well, I might need you to hold my hand,” he half-jests, and Caleb is already shifting to take the one set at his hip.

“ _Ja,_ okay.”

Molly aches. He has missed this scruffy wizard so much. He has missed _his Caleb_ so much, it hurts. It feels like a hole has been filled in his heart with the reappearance of those blue eyes and that ginger scruff.

“Not yet,” Molly assures gently, slipping his fingers from between Caleb’s and aching at the loss, “Get your stuff together, and we’ll see later.”

Caleb nods and turns to begin scrambling for his boots and books over the side of the bed, scrabbling to his feet in haste and Molly watches for a moment before he crawls over and, when Caleb is putting his boots on, perched on the edge of the bed-  
Molly gives in-  
Just a bit- Just-

He wraps his arms around Caleb’s thin hips- somewhat better fed, now- and he sets his cheek to Caleb’s back, eyes wide and staring at the pillows bearing the mark of the wizard. He sheds like a cat.

Molly wants to talk. There is a lot he’d like to say, but it won’t come, and Caleb sets his hands to Molly’s arms gently and stays silent, too.

They sort of lose track of how long they stay there. It’s far too long for casual, comfortable contact, far too long- but- but-

Molly has been gone so long. There is a lot to catch up on.

Eventually, it’s Caleb to pat gently at Molly’s arm,

“Time for that later,” he says, there’s the edge of a smile to his voice and Molly- Molly-

Molly almost bursts right into tears.  
That’s _his line,_ Molly’s line, has Caleb remembered after so long?  
But he doesn’t cry. He smiles, instead, as he draws away and Caleb goes for his books.

“Time for that later,” he agrees, “That’s all we have, now.”

“ _Was?_ ” Caleb looks over from his buckles and Molly stands to help with them, a smile firm on his face, he couldn’t get rid of it if he tried,

“Time,” he tells Caleb gently, looking to meet his eyes only briefly and finding fondness in the depths of the blue, “All we have is time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha ha haaa so much for one chapter a day


End file.
